Wednesday, November 16, 2011

For those of you who wrote to me that Fukushima rice was "safe" because it all "tested" well below the safety limit of 500 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium, sorry. NHK has a piece of bad news for you.

630 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium has been detected from the rice grown and harvested in Onami District of Fukushima City in Fukushima. It was discovered only because one farmer asked the local JA to test his rice.

The entire Onami District was declared good to ship the rice, after the Fukushima prefectural government tested 2 samples in one location in Onami District.

Onami District of Fukushima City has high radiation contamination, and that's where the volunteers have been sent to "decontaminate", scooping out the sludge in the drain by hand, among other pleasant activities. (If you read Japanese, here's a report by very pro-nuke Nikkei Business on "decontamination" volunteering in Onami: http://t.co/pSgB131c)

It has been revealed that 630 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium, exceeding the national provisional safety limit, was detected from the rice harvested in a location in Onami District of Fukushima City [in Fukushima Prefecture]. Fukushima Prefecture has requested the farmers in Onami District to refrain from shipping this year's crop.

According to Fukushima Prefecture, a farmer in Onami District of Fukushima City asked the local JA (agricultural co-op) to test his rice harvested in one of his rice paddies for radioactive materials. In a simplified test administered by the JA, radioactive cesium exceeding 500 becquerels/kg was detected which exceeded the national provisional safety limit.

Fukushima Prefecture then tested again, and 630 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the brown rice. The farmer has about 840 kilograms of rice harvested, but it is not being sold in the market. Upon receiving the test result, the Fukushima prefectural government requested all the rice harvested in Onami District of Fukushima City, including that of this farmer, to be not shipped this year.

In the "main survey" that Fukushima Prefecture conducted last month to measure radioactive materials in rice, two locations in the former Oguni-mura in Onami District were tested. Radioactive cesium detected there were vastly below the national provisional safety limit, at 33 becquerels/kg and 28 becquerels/kg, and the prefectural government allowed the shipment from the entire district. The Fukushima prefectural government plans to conduct a detailed survey of [the rice harvested in] all 154 farms in Onami district, and investigate the cause [of high radioactive cesium content].

I'd like to point out that there are recenti studies indicating that also Uji and Fukuoka prefecture are being contaminated by Cesium. Now it would be interesting to know how much green tea has been considered safe from those two prefectures. To my knowledge all radiation tests carried on green tea from Fukuoka, Uji and Kagoshima have been declared safe. Can I trust those tests?

And again, beeing below 500 bq/kg doesn't mean its safe. 500 bq/kg is okay for a short time in an emergency situation, but not for more than a few months...

500 bq/kg only means that the japanese goverment is willing to accept 150000 more people to get cancer EACH year. Foodwatch and IPPNW state, that a limit of 16 bq/kg is safe. And thats only for cesium. For Iod its even 0 bq/kg. 500 bq/kg is only safe for the gov. since they have to balance between economical threads and safety of the jap. people. 150000 deaths is an acceptable number for them, so they set the limit to 500 bq/kg.

source (only in german sorry): http://www.ippnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Atomenergie/Hintergrund_foodwatch_IPPNW_Strahlenschutz_nach_Fukushima.pdf

I would be very surprised if this disaster had any measurable effect on longevity. Frankly its a bit ridiculous to think that there will be a massive die-off due to this disaster, although I'm sure some of the more conspiracy-minded sites would wish for you to believe otherwise.

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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